None.
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
The gathering of the desirable parts of field crops in the harvesting process is usually performed by hand, with the exception of some onion and potato crops which may be harvested by machine. Such machines generally fall into the category of grabbers, such as the green onion harvester which is the subject of U.S. Pat. No. 3,989,110, and the category of diggers, such as in the case of potato harvesters. Other harvesting machines for field crops are simply processing machines which perform operations on the crop-parts after they are gathered by hand, such as the tomato harvester which is the subject of U.S. Pat. No. 6,033,035, the vegetable harvester which is the subject of U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,296, and the harvesting machine having blower damage prevention means which is the subject of U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,278. Otherwise, field crops are harvested by hand with the severance of the desirable part of the plant from the remainder of the plant which remains fixed to the soil.
The present invention does not dig in the soil to loosen and collect the crop plants and does not pull the plants by their tops, as in the case of other mechanical harvesters, but lifts the desirable parts of the crop from the soil in a process which either uproots the entire plant or allows for severance of the desirable crop-part from the part of the plant which remains attached to the soil. Thus, the present invention eliminates the hand labor in the crop gathering operation of harvesting, is gentler in the handling of crop-parts, and is less likely to damage crop-parts than current machine harvesting while operating at a higher speed.
The closest resemblance of the present invention to common devices is with the table fork or pitch fork, and certain heavy equipment uses, such as front end loaders and bulldozers equipped with rakes. The former of these devices are used primarily for spearing material, or digging through matted material and soil. The latter of these devices are designed to rake soil or push debris across the soil. None of these devices use forward motion under the desirable parts of crop plants to lift them from the soil and gather them by ramping them up an incline for gentle removal from the soil.
The present invention has elements that are covered generally by current United States Class 171, and International Class AO1D 23/04.
The present invention is an apparatus for harvesting ground surface crops, and includes a method for the use of the apparatus. The apparatus includes an array of crop-lifter bars, which are connected to the top of one or more cross-members. Each bar has an obtuse-angulation toward the front end of the bar. The front parts of the bars and the back parts of the bars are aligned in arrays to describe surfaces which may be curved or substantially planar on either side of the obtuse angle. The obtuse-angulation of the bars may be a gradual bend in the bars as well as an abrupt angulation. The bars are connected to the tops of the cross-members so that they are spaced closely enough to be smaller than the size of the parts of the plants of the ground surface crop to be harvested.
The crops which may be harvested with the apparatus include onions, lettuce, cabbage, or any other ground surface crop that may be lifted and held above the soil. The bars of the array, however, should be spaced far enough apart to permit weeds and other debris to drop between the bars to the ground. Such connection of the back parts of the bars to a cross-member must be far enough to the back so that the cross-member will not interfere with the movement of the bars through the soil. To aid in the movement of the bars through the soil surface, the bars may have forward-downward-sloping chisel faces.
The normal orientation of the harvester in use is with the fronts of the bars parallel to the ground surface, and the parts of the bars behind the obtuse angles inclined upward and rearward from the vertices of the obtuse angles. The harvester apparatus is used by moving it forward, front end first, along the ground sufficiently into the soil surface to slip underneath the crop-parts to be gathered. The elevation of the front part of the bars in the surface of the soil may be controlled with guide wheels attached to the harvester which can adjustably maintain the proper depth of the bars as they move through the soil surface.
As the front parts of the bars slips underneath the crop-part to be gathered, the crop-part is lifted from the soil by the forward motion of the harvester onto the front first parts of the bars. Upon reaching the angulation, the forward motion of the harvester causes the crop-parts to be ramped upward along the rearward upward incline of the bars, and are thereby detached from the soil surface.
Upon arriving at the upper end of the rearward incline of the bars, or at some other lower point on the array of bars, the crop-parts may be dumped into a trough or otherwise transferred to a conveyor or other means of moving the crop-parts for transport to bins or other containers.
Moving the apparatus which is the present invention forward through the soil to gather the crop-parts may be accomplished by pushing the array of bars through the surface of the crop bed with a machine, such as an appropriately modified front loader, or mounted on an appropriate carriage frame, wheeled or otherwise, and pulled through the soil in the same directional orientation. To assist the bars in moving through the soil, and to assist in loosening the crop-parts from the soil each bar may include a conduit for compressed gas along all or part of the length of the bar.